


Impossible to say

by RedHorse



Series: Sirry Ficlets [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (mostly subconscious) pining, Angst, Auror Harry Potter, Gen, James Potter & Lily Evans Potter Live, M/M, POV Sirius Black
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 09:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18848467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: If a raven brings you mail, you know it's bad news.





	Impossible to say

**Author's Note:**

> Written based on this prompt: for the sirius/harry asks: what about caretaking after Harry gets hurt OR an AU in which James and Lily lived OR love confessions?
> 
> Originally posted to my [tumblr](http://hiredhorse.tumblr.com) where I'd love to receive your Sirry prompts! <3
> 
> Now posted here to advertise a [Sirry Fest on AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SirryFest)! Consider prompting and/or claiming any time between now and July 31 2019!

_ Patient Harry Potter was injured. Guardianship spellwork indicates a substitute guardian resides at this address. Please report to St. Mungo’s magical malady ward, juvenile section. _

 

Sirius all but ran down the corridor from the lift, the note, delivered by one of those doomsday black ravens of Mungo’s, running on a loop in his anxious mind. 

 

He didn’t pause at the nurse’s station to ask which room Harry was in. He saw a nervous-looking Ron Weasley hovering outside the open door to a room halfway down the corridor. 

 

“What’s happened?” he demanded, skidding to a halt and craning to look past Ron into the room. There was a curtain drawn around the single bed, and Sirius’ breath caught with sudden, abject terror.

 

“Oh, no,” Ron exclaimed hurriedly, evidently alarmed by the look on Sirius’ face. “He’s fine. He was only a little bit splinched.”

 

Sirius went in the room; he had to see for himself. Splinched where? There were tiny little organs and blood vessels and things all through a person, he was vaguely aware. And a minor splinch could be fatal. He recalled a  _ Prophet _ story about some woman who died abruptly of an aneurysm, two days after an Apparation and without a single symptom to warn anyone.

 

“Harry?” he called, suddenly reluctant to part the curtains. His voice sounded faintly tremulous; he hated himself for it. Harry’s dark gold hand appeared, clutching the edge of the curtain with reassuring strength, then shoved it back on its track with a little rattle from the bits of metal connecting it to the ceiling.

 

“Sirius?” Harry looked surprised, but perfectly healthy. Sirius’ gaze roamed over him: good color in his cheeks, clear green eyes, prominent collarbones disappearing into the loose v-neck of the hospital gown, a thin layer of curly hairs dusting the curve of muscle beneath that. When had  _ that _ happened? Sirius wondered, even as he continued to take inventory. One bent knee tenting the loose fabric, one whole arm, lean but strong, looped around it. His feet were bare. All his long toes were in order, even the crooked middle one on the left foot which had caused Lily to make concerned inquiries the day he was born.

 

“You’re fine,” he decided at last, and dropped into a chair. 

 

“Yep,” Harry said, sounding amused. Sirius looked up at him, lips parting in surprise.

 

“Well, that’s good! I nearly had a heart attack!  _ Splinched, _ Ron said? What the hell, Harry? You aren’t even old enough for a license.”

 

Harry’s amusement gave way to irritation at once. “But all my friends are, which is just  _ fantastic. _ Sirius, are you... _ crying _ ?”

 

“No!” Sirius dabbed hastily at his eyes just in case, but if there were threatening tears, at least none had escaped yet. He glanced up at Harry accusingly. “If you’re going to do this kind of reckless shit, can you at least wait until your parents are back from the States, so that  _ I _ don’t have to get one of those deliberately cryptic fucking raven letters?”

 

Harry’s eyes were wide. “Sorry, Sirius.”

 

Now he felt worse. Scaring the kid. Why was he so terrible at behaving like an adult? Why in Merlin’s name had Lily let James make Sirius Harry’s godfather? Why had he said yes?

 

“Sirius,” Harry said softly, leaning in so that his breath stirred the hair on the crown of Sirius’ stubbornly bent head. Because he  _ was _ crying now, but at least not in the kind of way that made any noise.

 

“I just...couldn’t handle something happening to you,” he managed eventually. “And it would be my fault, somehow,” he added, looking up when he thought he had himself under control. But the sight of Harry’s face, up-close and frowning with concern, almost made him lose it again. His voice was rough as he continued with stubborn levity. “So your mother would have to kill me, but your father would try to stop her. We could all be lost in the magical firestorm.”

 

“That’s...probably accurate,” Harry said, with a fond little smile that Sirius knew meant he was thinking of his mum.

 

“Yeah, so,” Sirius said brightly. “Don’t be an idiot, yeah?” He was well-aware this kind of conversation would have had literally no effect on his own questionable behavior as a child, but Harry was smarter. He had all those Evans genes.

 

“Yeah,” Harry said, smiling and looking down at the blanket, pink-eared. “I’ll do my best.”

 

****

 

_ Patient Harry Potter was injured. Next of kin spellwork indicates a tertiary relative resides at this address. Please report to St. Mungo’s designated Auror ward. _

 

Sirius sprinted down the hallway with a disturbing sense of deja vu. But this time he did have to pause and ask where to go, and when the nurse pointed out a door he burst through it to find the curtains already drawn. Harry lay very still under a crisp white sheet with a net of spells so dense it looked like gauze swathing his sleeping face.

 

Sirius made an involuntary sound of distress, and a witch in Healer’s robes, whom Sirius hadn’t noticed in the room, came into his line of sight as she touched her wand to Harry’s shoulder and read from the scrolling diagnostic information generated by the spell.

 

“You’re Sirius Black?” she asked, without looking away from the information.

 

“Yeah,” he said, sagging against the doorway, the sight of Harry so lifeless confirming all the worst fears he’d had at the first sight of the raven. “Is he going to be alright?”

 

“Impossible to say,” said the Healer, terminating her spell and looking straight at Sirius with a sharp eye. “It took us an hour to break the curse, and there was substantial damage to his nervous system during that time. We won’t know its extent until he awakes.”

 

Sirius sat by the bed. How long would it take before word got to Lily and James? They were probably still deep in whatever Amazonian forest they’d gone off to in order to collect one of those rare potions ingredients Lily had been writing about to staggering acclaim. It was vaguely comforting to think that he was sparing Harry’s parents the torment of waiting at his bedside, at least. 

 

He cautiously touched Harry’s hand. It had a couple of faint scars Sirius recognized. One from a Quidditch accident when Harry was twelve, a faint mark between the web of skin between this thumb and forefinger. Another from some prank gone awry at Ron’s wedding, a wider, diagonal silver mark over the back of his hand. A few others he didn’t know; he traced them with a fingertip. A narrow crescent shape on the heel of his hand and, as he turned it over in his own, a nearly perfect sphere in the palm, dark pink, fresh.

 

Freely touching Harry carried a terrible thrill, belonging to an entirely family of thoughts that Sirius never admitted to, even in his own mind. The habit of repression was so deeply ingrained that, even now, his conscious thoughts skated over the implications of his fascination with this hand, its every line and scar. The strong arm above it. The way Harry came into a room; his inexplicable, gentle shyness. How his smile started on the right side of his mouth and slowly took over his whole face.

 

It had been hours, suddenly. Sirius knew because the windows were dark.

 

“Sirius?” came Harry’s voice, just above a whisper. Sirius looked up and saw that the fog of spells, which had made it hard to look at Harry’s face, had dissipated. Harry’s eyes were open and the hand Sirius had been holding so long twitched in his grasp.

 

“Harry? You’re...all right, then?”

 

The right side of Harry’s mouth quirked. “It looks like it.” He extracted his hand from Sirius’ and frowned at the palm of his hand, rubbing his opposite thumb across the circle on his palm. “Just one more scar.” Without looking at Sirius, he reminded him gravely, “No crying, now, Sirius. I’m all in one piece.”

 

Sirius breathed out a shaky laugh. “I noticed.” He dashed his tears away. “You brat.”

 

Harry reached out and picked Sirius’ hand up, sinking back against the pillows and closing his eyes. “It’s all right. When you get all blubbery, I know how much you love me.”

 

Sirius’ throat was tight. “You have no idea,” he managed. “But I do. I do love you.”

 

Harry smiled, his hand relaxing around Sirius’ as his weary body pulled him back toward sleep. “I love you, too.”

 


End file.
